Blizzard is reportedly making a third attempt at developing a StarCraft shooter, with former Far Cry executive producer Dan Hay, who joined Blizzard in 2022, leading the charge.
Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s announcement that StarCraft: Remastered and StarCraft 2: Campaign Collection hit the Game Pass subscription service in November, it has emerged that Blizzard is also working on a StarCraft shooter.
Word comes from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier while speaking to IGN’s Podcast Unlocked, below, about his new book, PLAY NICE: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment. Hay’s StarCraft shooter is mentioned in the book, and IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey asked Schreier if it’s likely to actually come out.
“If it’s not canceled!” Schreier replied. “This is Blizzard after all. Their history with StarCraft shooters is not good.
“Yes, that is a project that as far as I know is in development, or at least as of the time that I wrote this book was in development. They are working on a StarCraft shooter, StarCraft is not dead at Blizzard.
“The goal of the book isn’t to get a bunch of scoops about upcoming things. That wasn’t the purpose of this book at all, it was very much to tell a story and focus on stuff that had happened. But this felt like such an interesting and useful nugget to include because it really just shows you that Blizzard cannot quit StarCraft shooters.”
That’s a reference to Blizzard’s infamous attempt to release a StarCraft shooter in the past as part of a bid to expand the StarCraft franchise beyond its real-time strategy origins. StarCraft Ghost, announced in 2002, was going to be a tactical-action console game in which you played as a deadly Ghost operative in the employ of the Dominion, but it was canceled in 2006 after a series of delays.
A second attempt to make a StarCraft shooter, codenamed Ares, was canceled in 2019 so Blizzard could focus on Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2. Ares was reportedly “like Battlefield in the StarCraft universe,” but, like Ghost, fell by the wayside.
Now, it’s a case of third time lucky for Blizzard, with this new StarCraft shooter in development. We don’t have any details at this time, but perhaps Phil Spencer’s StarCraft t-shirt he wore during Microsoft’s Tokyo Game Show 2024 broadcast was more than a simple reference to StarCraft hitting Game Pass.
As for Hay, he joined Ubisoft in 2011 to work on Far Cry 3, then became executive producer for the Far Cry brand, shipping Far Cry Blood Dragon, Far Cry 4 , and Far Cry Primal. Hay was creative director and executive producer on Far Cry 5, and executive director for Far Cry New Dawn and Far Cry 6, before joining Blizzard in 2022 as GM/VP.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.